Shinto

The September 25th issue of Jinja Shinpō included an article about an annual purification ceremony held at Kamo Mioya Jinja (also known as Shimogamo Jinja) in Kyoto, an ancient and important jinja that enshrines the mother and grandfather of the kami of Kamo Wakëikazuchi Jinja — “Mioya” means “honourable parent”. This ceremony is held on the day before the calendrical first day of autumn, which this year was August 7th. (The calendrical seasons are based on the solar calendar, but they are way off. The theory I have heard is… Read More »Arrow-Seizing Ceremony

Last weekend, I went to Kinkazan Koganëyama Jinja in Miyagi Prefecture, as I have done every year since 2013. I was welcomed the first time I went, because I had made a significant effort to get there despite continuing disruption to public transport after the earthquake. However, after ten years, the relationship is quite different, in part because we all know what to expect of each other. These visits bring home to me the importance of time in building relationships in Japan, and possibly particularly in Shinto. If you are… Read More »The Importance of Time

I am reading an interesting manga at the moment, Ōten no Mon (応天の門), by Haibara Yak (灰原薬). It seems that the series is still ongoing, and I am up to volume 15 of the collected version. There does not appear to be a proper English translation, which is a shame — I think it would translate quite well, although there are a few points that would not have the same impact for an audience with no familiarity with Japanese history. It is set in early Heian Period Japan (mid to… Read More »Kami? Manga

Ashizu Uzuhiko is almost certainly the most important twentieth-century Shinto thinker. His influence on Jinja Honchō, and thus on the framework within which the overwhelming majority of Shinto jinja operate, was profound. I have written about him before, but Jinja Shinpō has just run a series of three articles (in the September 4th, 11th, and 18th issues) about his view on the separation of state and religion, so I am writing about him again. The author of the articles, Prof. Fujita, is at Kokugakuin University, but in the Health and… Read More »Ashizu Uzuhiko on State and Religion

The Shin Mei Spiritual Centre is a Shinto and Buddhist centre in Canada, on an island close to Vancouver Island, in the Pacific Northwest. It is now the North American branch shrine of Tsubaki Ōkami Yashiro, having taken over from the site in Washington State when Revd Barrish retired. It is run by Revd Ann Evans, who was trained at Tsubaki Ōkami Yashiro, and has published an English translation of Shinto norito. (That’s an affiliate link.) I haven’t visited this centre yet, but Revd Evans recently contacted me about selling… Read More »Shin Mei Spiritual Centre

Jinja Honchō has recently convened a committee to look into how it is funded, and how it spends the money. It has been about fifteen years since this was last done, and the immediate trigger was a change in the availability of statistics: one of the measures that Jinja Honchō used to ensure that its demands for payments were fairly distributed across Japan has not been updated since 2015. (I don’t know why it took them eight years to look for a replacement. I assume that the change looked temporary,… Read More »Jinja Honchō Finances